Agricultural education is available, but not widely.
As was mentioned in the Current Situation section of the website, there are three primary groups who provide opportunities for agricultural education in Whatcom County:
The FFA (Future Farmers of America), which runs chapters in Blaine, Ferndale, Lynden/Lynden Christian Schools, Meridian, Mount Baker, and Nooksack. There are no chapters currently available to students in Bellingham.
Common Threads offers garden education to students in the Bellingham Schools (as well as many other schools in Whatcom County), this program is available to students in grades pre-k through 8th.
Groups like 4H and the WSU Master Gardener program also contribute to this field, with an agriculture class at Options High School and various clubs.
So who has school gardens?
In Washington, school gardens are not uncommon. According to the Farm to School Census conducted by the USDA, Washington has 1,367 schools participating in USDA Farm to School programming, though more schools have gardens.
The Bellingham School District does have gardens at all elementary and middle schools. Unfortunately, there are no on-site, productive gardens at high schools.
A nearby district, Concrete School District, offers a robust school farming program in which students are producing food for their lunches and their larger community, while receiving applicable agricultural job training (Tobisch, 2023).
Gardening and Mental Health
Agriculture and mental health are two peas in a pod.
"Exposure to natural scenes mediates the negative effects of stress" (Hall & Knuth, 2019)
Working in a garden can help students ease feelings of stress, according to this 2019 study by researchers based out of Texas A&M
In Hall & Knuth's research, they also found that depression was decreased when people had access to green spaces.
Creating green spaces and opportunities to engage in nature can be done in a secondary setting, though it may fall to the teacher to make this possible.
Many schools do not have a garden space, so teachers may have to create their own green spaces in the classroom, using indoor plants or small grow lights to help connect students to agriculture.
Cognitively, plants and nature can increase student focus and attention span (Hall & Knuth, 2019).